


Stop Ringing the Bells

by howler32557038



Series: The Simple Life [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Romance, Babies, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, HOH Clint Barton, Kid Fic, M/M, Surprise Kissing, Tumblr Prompt, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howler32557038/pseuds/howler32557038
Summary: When Lincoln met Natalie.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Laura Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: The Simple Life [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1031180
Comments: 40
Kudos: 178





	Stop Ringing the Bells

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Due to the global pandemic, I will be writing again. ._. Hope y'all are healthy!

##  **February 14, 2018. 4:15 PM**

Ringing the Barton family’s doorbell after landing a quinjet fifty yards from their chicken coop seems a little audacious to Steve. They definitely know they’ve arrived, and the only reason they haven’t already thrown the door open is that they’ve almost certainly got their hands full. Bucky heads for their porch without waiting up for Steve and Lincoln and rings their bell _three times_.

Maybe this place is familiar to him, in a way - he’d grown up on a little farmstead like this one, just one house in the middle of nowhere with lots of siblings and space to play. Steve not only envies him, but he also envies him on Lincoln’s behalf. Maybe it’s because the Barton’s youngest child, Natalie, has known Bucky since she was just a few months old - that helps him feel like part of the family. Laura and Bucky had been pregnant right around the same time, but Laura was on her fourth by then and her much-needed support and advice had brought the two of them closer.

Clint and Laura’s infinite wisdom has helped them through their first year of this, and their comfortingly realistic standards for what constitutes a clean house with five children certainly helps now. Their house is cozy and cluttered and almost every mess seems to tell a happy story.

This is the only place outside of their quarters that Steve has ever seen Bucky relax, so when Laura had called and reminisced for ten solid minutes about what she called their “Friendsgiving,” then asked if they’d like to come over for “Palentine’s Day,” too, Steve had immediately laughed and promised they’d be there.

He was seventy-five percent sure Bucky had gotten misty-eyed with joy when he’d told him they were leaving the Facility. Steve can’t believe how lucky they are to know other parents in the same line of work, with the same need for secrecy. He’s glad they have others to share their isolation with.

Clint cracks the door open, peeks out, then opens it wide to throw his arms around Bucky just as Bucky rings the bell a ninth and tenth time. They haven’t seen Clint in almost four months, except on their cells.

“Hey, brother,” he drawls, grinning as he slaps Bucky’s back a dozen times, looks down into the bag that Bucky’s carrying to size up their dinner contributions, then sort of passes him over his shoulder, inside the house and right into Laura’s hug.

Clint doesn’t say hello to Steve or offer him a hug; he claps his hands together and holds them out expectantly. “Wow, look at you, big man.”

Lincoln squirms in the crook of Steve’s arm, leaning backward clumsily to turn and look. He takes his hand out of Steve’s shirt pocket where he likes to keep it, already pointing. “Key,” he pants, clearly thrilled. He stretches out both arms. “Key.”

Steve smiles. “Yeah, that’s Clint.” 

“Oh-ho-ho, yes sir. That’s me,” Clint nods, and catches Lincoln as he tips himself forward out of Steve’s supportive grip. Clint bounces Lincoln a little faster and higher than Steve does, but he holds his breath and says nothing. Clint probably knows what he’s doing. He hasn’t killed any of his own. “You got so big, Lincoln, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Bee.” Lincoln enthusiastically demonstrates _big_.

“Geez,” Clint breathes, the smile on his face suddenly stiffening. “How old is he again? Crazy smart.”

“Almost nine months,” Steve answers, catching Clint's eye to tell him, _Yeah, I fuckin’ know._ “I told you he was starting to freak me out.”

“Anything else weird going on? Is he a super-baby?”

“Hm,” Steve huffs - it’s the best attempt at laughter he can conjure at the moment. “Don’t ask him to find your eyes. He’ll give you a shiner and scratch your cornea.”

“Ha! He getcha?”

“Yeah, my eye was red for a week.”

“Yep. Me and Nathaniel were playing with our racecars when he was about Lincoln’s age. Whipped his head back and broke my nose. Babies, toddlers - they’re twenty-pound wrecking balls at this age, man. He’s fine.”

“I don’t mind that he’s enhanced,” Steve mumbles. “But I’m hoping for an office job.”

“Come on in,” Clint orders, handing Lincoln back over. “You guys just missed Nat, she dropped by yesterday--”

“She’s supposed to be undercover on assignment,” Steve gripes, even though he’s not the least bit surprised. Lincoln shouts and mouths wetly at the side of Steve’s jaw. Steve thinks it’s disgusting how long this teething shit apparently continues.

“Well, she was in the area, and Lila likes Auntie Nat’s costumes. She loves the blonde. I mean, me and Laura, we love the blonde, too,” he smirks.

“Clint,” Steve says, determined to be frank and casual about this. “Um, are you and Laura - are you guys, like, ‘swingers’?”

“Shing,” Lincoln says yearningly, gripping Steve’s collar. “Da, _shing_.”

“Not _your_ swing, Lincoln,” Steve mumbles. Damn it, he’d been completely frank and casual and then Lincoln had ruined it.

Clint never fixes his smirk. In fact, it broadens as he opens the screen door for Steve. “Why do you ask, Cap?”

Steve freezes on the threshold, staring at Clint. He can feel his smile sliding off his face. Clint is kidding. Clint’s definitely kidding. Surely. _Oh my God, do Clint and Laura want to--_

A high giggle suddenly escapes Clint’s chest. He slaps Steve’s back twice, not _too_ low, but definitely not as high as usual. “Gotta keep you on your toes, Rogers. We're a stable threesome. Get in there.”

Steve starts to take a step forward.

“Steve, I’m not trying to sleep with you. Go.”

Steve gives him a relieved grin and heads inside to meet Laura and Bucky by the dining room table where there’s already an impressive spread of pre-dinner snacks that aren’t quite appetizers.

Laura is kind enough to greet Steve and ask how he’s been before she moves in like a hunting predator to get her hands on Lincoln. The conversation continues once she’s got him on her hip, swaying automatically. Lincoln sizes her up and she absolutely fawns over him. With Natalie and with Nathaniel before her, Steve remembers Lars being hilariously blunt and earnest with her kids as if she was somehow a little less spellbound by her fourth. With Lincoln, she coos and giggles and baby-talks.

Natalie, dressed in a flour-covered romper and no undershirt, grins as she toddles in circles around the kitchen table, using the chair-backs to support her new walking habit. Her mother is too focused on her borrowed baby to watch Natalie go in circles on her sturdy legs, so Steve flashes a big smile and waves to her. She tenses for a moment, then lets out a loud, happy scream and bends her knees like she would jump if only she could.

Steve has actually _never_ just picked up someone else’s child without their permission. Not outside of an emergency on a mission. But he knows how to do it now, and Lars has _his_ , and Natalie has the stoutest little cheeks and she’s reaching out and grabbing for him--

“Hello, Miss Natalie,” he says, scooping her up off the floor. He dusts a bit of the flour off her romper as she takes in the room from her impressive new height. She zeroes in on Lincoln and her mother in seconds and twists in Steve’s grip to reach for them. “Uh-oh,” he chuckles. “You jealous that some other baby’s got your mama? Huh?”

“Mm-mm,” Natalie whines so pitifully that Laura makes a face at her. 

“Oh my, Natalie. It’s just Lincoln. We’ve played with Lincoln,” Laura reasons with her firmly.

Steve walks Natalie closer, hoping it’ll comfort her before she throws a fit and for a moment it seems to work. She recoils against him at first, but then she sits up straight. She’s quiet. No more whining. Seems totally calm.

And then she hauls off and shoves Lincoln just as hard as she can. One of her tiny hands connects with his shoulder. The other collides with his face. Lincoln doesn’t cry just yet - he startles and slaps Natalie’s arm before Laura and Steve can back up, hard enough to hurt her. Maybe hard enough to leave a nasty mark.

Laura is just as shocked as Steve. They glance at each other, slack-jawed. Bucky stands there staring like he’s watching a car wreck in slow motion. A pretzel bag rustles as Clint grabs a second handful. Unlike the other three adults, Clint is waiting like a gleeful spectator.

Then, Natalie screams that happy little scream again and swipes giddily in Lincoln’s direction. “No, no! No!” she hollers, sounding like Laura. “You stop it.” She repeats this a few times, and Steve eventually understands her.

“ _No,_ no, you stop.” Steve understands his own son immediately, even though Lincoln speaks entirely in garbled, drawling consonants. He leans precariously out over Laura’s arm to bat at Natalie’s swinging hand.

Laura and Steve inch toward one another cautiously. “What are we doing, are we gonna let ‘em fight this out, Laura?” Steve asks. He’s getting nervous.

“No one’s crying yet,” Laura laughs incredulously.

“Ba-by fight, ba-by fight,” Clint chants unceasingly.

“It’s like when the girls fight on the guys’ shoulders,” says Cooper, Laura and Clint’s _twelve-year-old_ son. Steve hadn’t noticed him come in. “On Spring Break.”

Clint offers no reprimand. He hands his son the pretzel bag. One glance at his ear reveals that, like he usually does when he’s home with all four kids, he’s taken out his hearing aids. He openly swears by this as a coping mechanism.

“Let ‘em at each other,” Bucky laughs suddenly. “They haven’t seen each other in a few months - I think they remember each other now.”

Hesitantly, Steve puts himself shoulder to shoulder with Laura. He feels like he’s introducing two skittish German Shepherds. Sure enough, there’s instantaneous hitting and screaming. “Lincoln,” Steve says sharply, thinking about his own scratched cornea. “Be gentle. Whoa--” He barely dodges the back of Natalie’s skull as she squirms, and suddenly he recalls Clint’s broken nose, too. “ _Gentle.”_

Lincoln keeps hitting her, but very gently.

And then Natalie tips herself forward, face first, and _kisses_ Lincoln. Right on the eye.

This little girl just _kissed_ his son.

“Ooh,” Cooper grins obnoxiously.

“Ooh,” Clint echoes. “Happy Valentine’s Day to you, Lincoln.”

Laura looks like she’s going to die. “Buck, look - our babies love each other. Oh my God, let’s have a wedding.”

Bucky pales and barely manages to give her a laugh. “Oh, ha. Not yet.”

Natalie grabs Lincoln’s face as tenderly as her clumsy hands can manage and kisses him _again_. Again, on the eye.

And after being passed from person to person in a noisy room, then slapped and pinched, screamed at, and argued with, _now_ Lincoln cries.


End file.
